


Why Can't You See? You're Ruining Me.

by misha_collins_butt



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angry Dean Winchester, Bunker Wincest, Dean Winchester - Freeform, Hurt Sam Winchester, Jealous Sam Winchester, John Winchester - Freeform, M/M, Mary Winchester - Freeform, Reserved Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester - Freeform, Sam Winchester/Dean Winchester - Freeform, Sam and Dean Winchester - Freeform, Shy Sam Winchester, Teenage wincest, The Winchester Brothers - Freeform, The Winchesters - Freeform, Wincest - Freeform, Wincest memories, double pov, sam and dean - Freeform, wincest fluff, wincest smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-19
Updated: 2015-04-30
Packaged: 2018-03-24 16:52:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 19,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3776164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misha_collins_butt/pseuds/misha_collins_butt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam and Dean used to be closer than they are...but ever since the time, even way before they found the Men of Letters' Bunker, when Sam finally quit drinking Demon blood, things have been tense. And they continue to be, if not more tense, after Dean admits to still having certain feelings about Sam.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Flirt Much, Dean?

~~ _Dean lifts his hand and takes another long drag of the cigarette, his gaze pensive and balanced on a leaf dancing from it's branch on the tree to his right._

_He rolls the smoke around in his mouth before swallowing it and letting his lungs caress the iridescent air, then exhales slowly._

_God, if Sammy were to catch him..._

_Rubber scuffing the shadowed bricks._

_"Thought ya quit, Dean," John's voice is an arrow, shooting through the curtain of black._

_Dean just pushes his lips outward, his head bobbing and his eyes hopscotching the dark bricks of the back porch. "'Eah, well...I tried. 'S what counts, right, dad? Isn't that what you always said?" His throat scratches at itself, his words tumbling over eachother to scamper out into the night. "What you always told me?" His head raises with his eyebrows and he turns to the man._

_Eyelashes flip, heads turn. Frowns tug. Nods are exchanged._

_"Yeah...yeah I think that's about right," John responds, pulling out his own pack of cigarettes and wiggling his finger at Dean, who hands over his black Zippo with reserved shadows beneath his eyes._

_Orange pierces the velvet blinds, scaring the dark away and a lighter is tossed from a hand to a hand._

_"You know, if your brother s--"_

_"I know," Dean gulps down the familiar urge to punch John square in the face. A curl falls over his eye, the tip of it juggling between his eyelid and his eyebrow. "I know."_

_A lingering silence is endured - only slightly less awkward than the small talk they usually attempt to synthesise, fabricated smiles and manufactured nods of the head and everything._

_"Dean?" A small voice chews across the cement and skids to a stop in Dean's ears and through the blackness, Dean watches small fingers drag over a hazel eye. "Why are you doing that again?" Disappointment. A bald innocence, a raw love, an aching heart and a tired hand reach across the border into light and scrabble at Dean's sleeve._

_Dean crouches to find a frightened frown and a cold jitter. And Sam fucking whines, goddamnit, he's twelve._

_"Sammy," Dean smiles, an indigo smile that fleets it's way through Dean's lips as if they're a bar and it's on a road trip. "Go back to bed, buddy. It's not good for your lungs to be out here right now."_

_"As far as I know, it's not good for yours either..."_ ~~

Sam was sassy even back then, at 12 and a half. Dean smirks, nods, and wiggles the pen between his fingers. 

Footsteps behind him alert him to Sam's presence, but he turns to look anyway. He finds an adorably tired Sam, the imprint of a creased pillow disturbing his cheek and the sweat of a hot room forcing his hair to stand up and stick to his skin on the right side of his head.

"Hey, there, sleepin' beauty. Sweet dreams?" 

"Shut up," Sam swipes a lock of brown out of his face sleepily and plops into the chair, his left arm resting over the table and the right one smarting against the top of his thigh.

"Aw, come on, Sammy. Can't deny you look sexy."

"Seriously, Dean?"

"What?" Dean chuckles, smile fading and he throws a donut across the table. "Hey, come on. Eat."

"What, you want me to eat this?"

"Dude. For once, eat something beside rabbit food."

"Dean, the 'rabbit food' I eat prevents me from having a heart attack at 50. Why do you think I try so hard to get you to eat it."

"'Cause you're a cult, that's why."

Sam's huff is one of frustration and Dean's lips tug up into a bemused smile.

He bites into the donut again.


	2. What's Happened to Us?

~~ _"Sam?" A creaking door, a concerned Dean. A sudden realisation and Dean's footfalls over the old wood of Sam's bedroom floor. "Shit. Sam." Muttered words that mean more to Sam than they should. "Sammy, you okay?"_

_Hands hold one cheek and tap the other, prodding Sam to glance up, which he can't do for long because, Jesus Christ, the tears sting. Even more when his eyes are directly exposed to light._

_And Dean just shakes his head, the most distraught melancholy in his eyes._

_"Sam," just a breath that Sam's almost positive he wasn't meant to hear and a pair of arms reaching around Sam and a head of spiked blonde squishing against Sam's own brown hair._

_Dean doesn't release Sam as he swings around and bounces poignantly into the bed beside Sam, pulling Sam closer than he thought possible and not even bothering to ask what's happened this time._

_Because Dean knows damn well by now not to._

_And they just sit there, breathing into eachother, ribs crushed under the strength of folded arms, a chin being rested over the top of a mop of unkempt brown hair, warmth being shared and passed between both clothed and exposed skin...two hearts pounding faster than they should be, indicating feelings that shouldn't exist between two brothers._

_Sam pretends he doesn't notice...hopes Dean will pretend, too - simply for the sake of pretending_. ~~

Sam stares out the window, not actually seeing the trees flickering by his eyes as he recalls that first time he realised that his brother loved - still loves - him in more than a brotherly way. Still brotherly...just...maybe...over-brotherly.

Whatever the case, and however frustrating it may be that he can't seem to explain the way Dean loves him or the man's poor methods for showing it, Sam knows that it will never matter in the end. Because that love will never change. 

A hand squeezes beneath his hair against his neck and fingers brush through the literal brown mop attached to his head.

"Whatcha thinkin' about, Sammy?" Dean's voice slices Sam's tired thoughts and caresses a ginger smile that kisses Sam's ear. When Sam doesn't answer, instead, only revels in the gentle concern of Dean's voice, Dean seems to become even more worried. "Sammy?"

"Hmmmm," Sam concedes to Dean's tugging arm and scoots across the Impala's front seat. His head lands on Dean's shoulder, but Dean's sharp inhale lifts it again.

"Sam..."

"Sorry I just...I was-I--"

"It's fine..."

Sam slides back across and sits with his legs holding awkward hands. He lifts his eyes to Dean and builds the courage to ask the daunting.

"Why do you always do things like that, Dean?" 

Dean's eyebrows droop slowly and he regards Sam with a sidelong glance.

As if he's not a clue what Sam is talking about.

"What?"

"Why...do you always...do things...like... like tug on my hair and then act like you don't know why I want to--" Sam shifts his entire body so it's facing away from Dean, toward the window. Toward his imaginary escape.

Sam can't see Dean but he knows Dean well enough that he knows what look he has on his face. 

One that holds confusion, some level of guilt. And, when Dean doesn't answer as Sam had actually expected, Sam whips his head around to watch Dean with scrunched brows and hard, accusing eyes.

"Sam--"

"Dean, I..." His voice shakes with his breaths. "I want things to be like they used to--"

"Yeah, Sam. I get that, I do..." Dean's words are quick and harsh. They make Sam flinch. "I really do, and God knows... Sam, that's how I want it to be too. But God also knows things can't be...God knows and you know and I know and fuck it if everyone else doesn't."

Dean's teeth are gritted and Sam tries not to let Dean hear the sudden sob building in his throat.

Dean, though, apparently has fuckin' super hearing because, albeit subtle, his gasp is heartbreaking and obviously because of Sam's tears. Ever the dutiful big brother. 

"Sammy," Dean breathes and reaches across the seat. His hand hovers over Sam's shoulder - he can feel it, despite his lack of ability to see it - and lands there with such little hesitation that it's almost offensive.

Sam rips his shoulder away scrunches his face at Dean, accusing, teary, and broken.

"Fuck you, Dean," he knows the words won't sting as much as he wants them to - he's said it too many times before for it to have any affect on Dean whatsoever - but he says it, nevertheless.

"Sam--"

"Don't 'sam' me, you asshole. I asked you a question." Dean's eyebrows pull up and in and his lip wobbles. 

He doesn't answer, or speak, or make much of any noise at all save for a small whimper as he flips his eyes back to the road.

"Answer me!" Sam growls and his shoulders tremble...from a sudden outburst of anger, from prolonged anguish, from inexplicably new disappointment, from years of guilt and pain and pent up want for Dean. And from a terrible, gut- wrenching, nauseating exhaustion that eats at him like the contrition of accusation toward his own brother. His voice becomes soft, reserved. Like it used to be. Like it was when they used to be...Sam shakes his head and adds, begs, "Please..."

It takes a long time - what seems like hours, days, weeks, years. 

"I-I...I don't...know...okay? Sammy? I don't...don't know. Maybe..." Dean's hand flies from the steering wheel and his fingers spread as he holds out his arm, exasperation obvious in his flourishing motions. "I...possibly leftover from...well, ya know...maybe..." He keeps shaking his head like that'll make the situation disappear. "Look, the point...is...Sammy, I don't know, I just don't."

"Yeah, I gathered that."

And maybe he was wrong...maybe that love could disappear...

Maybe it already has...


	3. Sam May Like Chick-Flick Moments

~~ _"Dean?" Sam's voice vibrates through the room and wakes Dean. He smirks between the darkness, hoping Sam won't see it._

_He wasn't completely sure this would happen tonight, as the day has been a day of fun and blissful ignorance for the entire Winchester family - Sam's birthday party. Not quite his birthday, but that would take place on a school day, and they decided it wouldn't exactly be the greatest idea to try and fit a party in the time frame of getting home from school and getting to sleep on time._

_But Sam's here now, and, though he's almost 13, for fuck's sake, he still snuggles up to his brother every night. Because why the hell not, right?_

_Dean purposely shifts loudly enough for Sam to hear, scooting over in his bed to make room for Sammy - this means shoving this back against the wall, as uncomfortable as it may be - and spreading his arms._

_Sam obliges without reluctance, tiptoeing across the creaky-ass floor and climbing over the curve of the edge of the bed. He slides between the comforter and the bed and between Dean's careful arms._

_"Mum again?" And Sam nods, attached to his face a damn ridiculous pout and attached to his hand his chest, which contains a breaking heart, Dean knows. It doesn't help how bad the nightmares are getting. "It's okay, Sammy." Dean smooths his hand over Sam's mess of hair and shushes the boy. "It's okay, I'm here."_

_And up until that point, Sam had been facing away from Dean. He started doing that when he was about 10, as Dean's been comforting Sam like this for years now - since the boy was 3, old enough to have memorable dreams - and Dean had been thoroughly, heart-stoppingly disappointed he finally had started turning away at that damn age of 10. That's when everything bad happened, at 10x_

_Dean obviously hadn't ever let those feelings show._

_But now, to Dean's utter surprise, Sam turns back over, facing Dean, and drifts away to a state of half consciousness, encircled by Dean's arms._

_And then Dean hears a short gasp of air, and stiffens, on guard for anything that his little baby brother might sense that he can't, but soon realises it's just Sam, breathing in the scent of Dean's pillow._

_He smiles._

_Apparently even just his smell comforts Sam, drags the boy up from even the deepest depths of his darkest dreams._

_Sam always does things that are unexpected, but he never does anything that's too unexpected...so what he does next is...well...unexpectedly unexpected._

_He pulls himself in further, so he's pressed flush against Dean and the older boy can feel the little shit's boner._

_He waves it off. It's not the fact that Sam is in a bed next to his older brother..._

_Is it?_ ~~

Sam smelling Dean's pillow, practically gulping in his older brother's scent...well, let's just say it's somewhere on his list of top ten hottest fucking things he's ever experienced. 

And he has a feeling Sam either thought Dean was asleep, and wouldn't hear, or just thought he wouldn't notice the reason for the breath being taken so loudly.

Another thought strikes Dean: maybe, Sam did it, knowing Dean would hear, wanting him to hear...

That just makes the entire memory a thousand times more amazing.

His eyes close and his forehead scrunches against the wall of the shower as he struggles to control his straining neck, his weak knees. 

A dangerously loud gasp escapes his throat as he reaches the very edge of coming.

"Dean?" Sam's voice, deeper, now that he's not 12, but still so small and scared, echoes against the carbon fibre of the shower and against the walls of Dean's skull. His eyes whip open and he grunts, hoping, praying, Sam will think it's just him being frustrated about Sam interrupting Dean's shower and not about his sudden inability to finish himself off. "Dean...I know this isn't the best time...I just figured...maybe it'd be easier for us to...talk...if it wasn't face to face..."

Dean's eyebrows pull down and he frowns. 

Okay...not what he was expecting.

"About?" Dean's voice squeaks and the silence that follows constricts the thick, foggy air and is shattered only by the scream of water hitting the shower floor.

"Are...you okay?" Sam's voice reverberates through the bathroom.

Damn...Dean was hoping the moose wouldn't be able to hear the strain in his voice.

"Uh...yeah...this-this just...like you said... it's not the best time, Sammy."

Dean can practically _hear_  Sam's disappointed nod.

Fuck, how does that little shit always break Dean's heart so easily. 

"It's fine, I'll just...I'll..." An exhale and the soft drag of footsteps. 

Dean's aching cock is just now realised and he inhales slowly, shakily, trying to calm his mind and his jumping appendage. 

He finishes, not as turned on as he was when he entered the shower, snakes the towel from the rack, and runs it back over his hair. 

He wraps it around his hips and prays to Cass that Sam doesn't show as he's walking out.

Because fuck everything if he doesn't still have feelings for his little brother...and he definitely doesn't want Sam to know, much less let Sam...or himself...do something about those feelings...


	4. Showers Are The Best

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I did my best to match American school hours. Most American middle-schools start around 7:40 to 8:00, right?? ಠ____ರೃ

~~ _Sam's eyes flutter open and he rubs his knuckles against them. They shift to the clock and he scowls._

_7:22 on a Thursday._

_Has to be to school in fifteen minutes._

_He suddenly realises the lack of heat, the absence of a body beside him and whips his head to the left._

_He's just waking up, too, so no one can blame him for not hearing the water running in the other room or seeing the crack of light exploding from between the door and the doorframe of the bathroom attached to Dean's room._

_Sam knows Dean must not think he's awake because he can hear Dean's moaning._

_Sam just smiles._

_Sick little fuck._

_He holds his head in his hands and simply listen. And, just as he suspected: the erection makes a sassy guest appearance._

_Holy fuck, he never knew listening to his own brother jacking off could possibly be so intoxicating._

_He silently prays to a god he's not quite sure he believes in that he doesn't go to hell for this._

_The shower turns off and the rings keeping the curtain in place clack against eachother as Dean steps out of the shower. Sam scrambles to slip back beneath the comforter and close his eyes._

_He breathes deeply, trying to make his heart stop fucking racing. Fortunately, his breaths even out by the time, he hears the door creak open and damp feet slapping the floor._

_He dauntlessly cracks an eye open and his breath hitches then gargles in the back of his throat._

_Holy fuck._

_Not so fortunately, he forgot that he's supposed to be sleeping...and Dean's heard him._

_Sam plays it cool and pretends he's just woken. He raises his head and fakes a yawn, plastering a sleepy smirk to his eyes and an exhausted frown to his lips._

_"Heya, sleepin' beauty."_

_Ugh, that one again._

_"Eh, fuck you, Dean," Sam grumbles as disconcertedly as possible and acts like Dean's muscles, still glimmering with a sheen of water, don't affect him._

_And, God, is it difficult..._  ~~

Sam remembers that first time he was caught breathless because of Dean...because of Dean's utterly inexplicable beauty.

And that beauty still strikes him to this day. Still as much, if not even more, than when he first realised it.

Sam kicks his leg up over the table and cross the other over it, clearing his throat and pursing his lips outward, his eyebrows dripping in drops of water over his attentive eyelashes.

'John Doe discovered dead on the side of a road in the outskirts of Silver Creek, Mississippi, chest ripped open, heart missing.'

"You can do better than that," Sam mutters and clicks his way back to his search on Google. "Come on, thinkin'... mysterious disappearance...maybe cattle mutilations? Feeling morbi--"

"Watcha mumblin' about now, Sammy?" Dean steps into the library, jean clad legs, blonde hair still damp, and Sam catches just a sliver of skin as Dean finishes pulling on his shirt. Sam's eyes dance away before Dean can catch him staring. 

"Just praying to...well, you know what I mean...that a case shows up soon. There's no interesting ones anymore, ya know? Like...let's try for...Wendigo...or Khan Worm...djinn, something that's not... demons and Angels," Sam's eyes scamper over his computer screen as he rushes to speak, to distract Dean from the fact that he was so obviously staring at the older man.

Too late.

"Sammy, you gotta stop being so picky about these cases," he takes a calm step toward Sam and frowns. "And you gotta stop watching me like that...we both have higher priorities to deal with, and it's really not helpin' that you keep staring."

Sam squints, regarding Dean with an implicit sense of cautiousness, but Dean stretches upward and Sam gets the tiniest peek of skin, and his breath catches. Not audibly, thank the stars, but it's heart-stopping, stomach-knotting, exhilarating, to see even a centimetre of Dean's skin that isn't appropriately exposed (i.e. his arms when he's wearing a t-shirt).

Dean's said it before - that he still has certain feelings and thoughts about Sam. But he's never been so reserved about it, and his suddenly precarious attitude about it spikes Sam's suspicion.

Realisation hits.

What exactly had Dean been doing in the shower? Sam heard him gasp a few times as he waited beside the door, gathering the bravery to even open the damn slab of wood that was the only thing standing between him and his - as he now knows - jacking-off brother. 

It should've been him in there with Dean... should've been Sam's hands skimming over Dean's skin, twisting over Dean's hard cock, fingers fumbling for grip on Dean's slippery chest, on his abdomen, the epitome of sculpted.

And fuck, it should've been him.


	5. Dean? Priorities? Nooooo.

~~  _"I don't know, Sammy. Maybe...this hunt ain't for you..."_

_Sam's whine of utter chagrin is actually slightly amusing but now is not an appropriate time to laugh, and Dean is good at holding things back. So he does._

_He wraps the gauze around Sam's arm and holds Sam's face with one hand when he's done. A thumb brushes over a pink, smiling cheek, and green eyes are crinkled as they smile back, sad and possessive._

_"I don't like watching you get hurt like this..."_

_"Yeah, Dean, I know..." Sam leans his forehead against his brother's in a breathtaking fit of apparent bravery and, as John is in the other room, and the walls are thin, under his breath, he adds, "God, you're beautiful."_

_Dean blinks, completely distrusting his own ears because what the fuck is happening? Fuck everything if he just heard what he thinks he heard._

_"What?" Dean breathes, his moss green eyes catching Sam's greenish-hazel ones._

_They sit and stand, respectively, in silence for at least three minutes, Sam's face trapped between Dean's hands, before Sam reaches up...and slips his own hands beneath Dean's jacket, letting them come to rest against Dean's waist, and Dean breathes out shakily. But he also - slowly at first - moves toward Sam. He baby steps forward until he's pressed square against Sam and his legs are slotted between Sam's._

_Dean's arms shift to wrap around Sam's neck and they, instead, stand this way for a period of time in which no words are exchanged. But then Sam is inching forward, just his face, and so is Dean and their faces inch forward together and an unspoken question about what this might be hangs in the carbon dioxide mixing between them and Dean is about to do something that's not exactly on the list of things you can do and still get into heaven, and, Jesus Christ, their lips are so close now - a millimetre apart at most..._

_And then John's door opens and shuts and they scamper back, away from eachother, Dean taking a back step and Sam leaning back on his hands, pressing them into the hood of the Impala._

_They stare at eachother, breathing quick and harsh, but when their father enters, Dean has to look down, his gaze skipping over the cement floor of the garage._

_Shit..._

_What has he done_? ~~

"Sammy, I'm just sayin'...I think maybe you should sit this one out..."

Sam huffs and flings another silver blade into the duffle bag. "Why, Dean? Huh?" He scoffs and twists his head, probably so he can gauge Dean's reaction. "Why, because you're scared? That I'm gonna go off the wall again? Is that it?"

"Sam, that's not what I'm say--"

"Yeah, right. Dean, that's _never_  'what you're saying'. Even though, it's completely obvious that you're just scared that little Sam is gonna see a single drop of demon blood and go fucking AWOL," Sam turns, waving his arms in the air to imply frustration, then steps forward and jabs Dean in the sternum. "But, ya know what, Dean? I'm not _nearly_  as much of an addicted _freak_  as you think I am. Besides. I thought you got over this a long time ago."

"Sam, would you fucking listen!"

Sam shuts his trap for once and watches Dean with a flippantly ardent stare and a hard set jaw.

Dean steps further into the moose's room and holds up his hands in innocence.

"Sam...I'm not saying that's what will happen," he takes the last few steps toward Sam less cautiously and, when he gets to Sam, he raises his brows and pleads with Sam for patience and understanding. "And I am...certainly not saying that you're an addicted freak. Sammy, I know better than anyone that you're not. It's just..." He sighs inwardly and absent-mindedly lifts a hand to Sam's face, hooking his fingers behind the taller hunter's ear and playing his thumb over the other man's cheek. "Sam you know I hate seein' you so--"

"So sad? Sooo...oblivious, angry," he pauses and rips Dean's hand away. His breathing gets harder and he snarls at Dean. "So pathetic, and foolish, and stupid, and feeble, and _hurt_ , and _WEAK_?!"

"Damnit, Sam!" Dean grapples Sam's face in his palms and shakes him. "God fucking damnit! Sammy, why do you do that, huh?! Why you gotta say things like that?!"

"Like what?!" Sam's words overlap Dean's, shove them out of the way and stand, jeering, in the spotlight. "Like the truth?! The truth about what you think of me--"

"Your truth, Sam!" His breaths calm and he shakes his head slowly, then adds, his words softer now. "Your truth, not mine."

"Dean, don't lie--"

Dean's throat rumbles with a thunderous growl and he shakes his head again, more fervently, then leaps forward and smashes his lips against Sam's.

"Why," he kisses Sam's lips again. "Can't." Kisses his nose. "You." Kisses a cheek. "Just." Kisses the other cheek. "Shut." Kisses his forehead. "Up," the last word is spoken with a ginger finality, a soft solidity, and no respect for the fact that what just happened actually happened. Green eyes search hazel.

"Dean--"

"I know Sam. I said priorities," he swallows and licks his lips before letting his eyes drop. "I know, and right now...you're a priority. Right now, I need to get you to shut the fuck up and accept the fact that you're wrong and I'm trying to tell you what's right. What I'm actually thinking, and not just your messed up version of what you think I'm thinking. And to get you to realise how fucking important you are to me."

A prolonged silence sweeps through the air and does a waltz above their heads, taunting them, glaring, making fun of the fact that neither of them can find words suitable to what just happened, to what might come next.

"My lips hurt," Sam finally whispers and Dean doesn't even think about trying to stifle a relieved chuckle. 

"Tough shit, kid..." Another pause. "But, since I'm such a great brother..."

Dean places a more gentle kiss on Sam's lips and holds the two of them together, by their lips, for a more than fitful amount of time. 

"All better?" Dean smirks when he pulls back. Sam's smile is amiable, warm, thoughtful.

Dean smiles back, genuinely.

Really, he does.

It's just...

What has he done?


	6. Protective!Dean. Such Protective. Very Sacrifice. Much Dean.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Three days after the last chapter

~~  _"Dean. I'm not some kid anymore. I'll be fine," Sam argues._

_"Sam...please....I'm beggin' you, just..." Dean's smile isn't a smile at all. More like a grimace featuring teary eyes and pulled in brows, melting eyelids and red tinted cheeks. "Please. Don't do this."_

_"Dean, someone's gotta be bait. And I'm not gonna let it be you--"_

_"Sam,_ I'm _the big brother!_ I'm _the one...who's 'sposed to protect you,_ _not  _ _Let you run in, guns blazing, like the_ half-assed little shit _you're being!" He clamps down on Sam's wrist and shakes his head. "When are you...going to start using that big brain of yours, and stop running into things you_ can't _._ Handle _?!" Those last words start out soft, possessive, then turn violent again and Sam simply flinches away._

_He hates when Dean yells but he can't seem to help frustrating the man._

_It's just a natural part of him...like knowing how to breathe. It's always there, it's just a subconscious thing that only makes an appearance in his conscious mind every few days._

_"Please. Sam. I am...begging on my knees. What...do I need to do...to get you to back out?"_

_Sam looks away, ashamed, tired, confused. Terrified._

_Dean's right though - he's only 13...why waste his life now, when there's going to be so many other opportunities for suicide missions down the road?_  ~~

Sam thinks about his morbid little brain he used have - still...kind of has, admittedly - as he shoves everything he's going to need for hunting demons into the duffle bag that's crumpled around other, not-as-necessary items atop his bed.

His breathing can't seem to pace itself.

"Dean. Seriously, I'm not a little kid. I'll be okay."

"Yeah, says the guy who slept in his brother's bed, with his brother, until he was 16. Yeah, real cute."

"You're the one who let me."

"My point remains. Sammy, I don't want you taking this risk."

Sam doesn't answer. He stifles through the bag, pretending to look for something so he can avoid answering that.

"Sam."

"Dean."

Dean growls - literally - in frustration and Sam hears him turn, punch the drywall straight through - thanks, Dean - then walk up behind him, closer this time.

There's a new air of softness surrounding the blonde haired man and Sam finally turns to look him straight in the eyes.

He's closer than Sam though, and Sam nearly stumbles back into the bed.

"Please--" Dean begs again, his voice broken, exhausted, falling into the softness of Sam's attentive ear.

"If you're going, I'm going--"

"Then I won't go..." Dean's voice carries finality, assuredness. A terrible, haunted memory of which Sam knows Dean will never reveal the actual nature. 

Sam swallows, steps closer, and, without better judgment, or with an obvious, outright lack thereof, takes Dean's hands in his own. He holds them low and cranes his neck to touch his forehead to Dean's.

"Fine."

"Good."

"Dean?"

God, Sam hates these single worded conversations they have. 

He knows they only have them because, ninety-seven percent of the time, they both seem to know exactly what the other is thinking without having to speak at all.

Still.

"Yeah?" Dean's response sounds too flat and Sam knows he's hiding tears again, tucking them away and smiling like a good brother.

"Please stop treating me like a baby."

Parted lips and a heartbroken expression is what Sam's statement coagulates and he almost feels bad about it.

Almost.

"What?"

"I said--"

"I know what you said...Sam, I know. I just don't know why you would say it."

'Because you do treat me like a baby,' is what Sam means to say but what comes out is something even he had never expected; a kind of stoic speech that Sam doesn't usually barf out to his brother. 

"Dean, I get it. You want to protect me. You do. You continuously, arrogantly, stupidly throw your life on the line and shove mine off, almost rudely. And you know damn well I want to protect you, too." Dean makes a strange face at that, as if he hadn't known. Sam ignores it. "But protecting me doesn't mean you need to treat me like some kicked puppy, okay?"

No response. Dean's turned into a radio that, no matter which way Sam tunes him, all that arises is statick, a buzzing silence that gives him shivers, chills him to his very core.

"Dean. I'm serious. And, yeah, I get that the whole drinking demon blood thing kind of set that back...that was a half-assed move and I never should have even considered it. But that's over and done and in the past and whatever else you want me to say about it--"

"I want you to not talk about it at all. You've apologised, you've admitted you were wrong, and you've given the most idiotic excuses known to the human race. So drop it."

Sam steps back and considers Dean's words, staying silent to give him more room to speak if he needs it. When he doesn't, Sam continues.

"Anyway...I know that didn't help...but I'm not...an abused animal. And you don't have to act like I am in order to keep me safe. Just...keep me safe...like a normal human being."

Dean laughs, nods, steps a little too close, fists Sam's shirt between his fingers, and drags Sam down to Dean's height. 

"When have we... _ever_...been normal?" He whispers, and Sam can see how hard he's trying to resist kissing the taller man again.

"Point taken. Flinchingly," Sam agrees and falls back against the bed beside his the duffle bag so he's a little farther from Dean than he, in all honesty, would like to be, but hoping to exacerbate Dean's restraint. He wants to kiss him again but Dean was right, yesterday, when he talked about priorities. "But taken."

"Don't say it like that."

Sam rolls his eyes. 

"Look, Dean...sacrifice may be protection. But we can't protect eachother that way anymore. That means you, shoving me out of harm's way more times than I can count? That's fine. That's part of the job. But I'm willing to die for you and you're willing to die for me, and while that's obviously never going to change, we can't keep acting on it so much," Sam doesn't look at Dean, just at his own hands and Dean's boots. "If I die again...you can't save me. You can't go back on all of our promises, can't go make a deal with whatever demon is still willing to, can't... do whatever else we've ever done in the past to bring eachother back. You've just gotta let me--"

"You know I can't do that."

"And you know you have to."

Dean tears up and drags his feet across the wood. He reaches Sam and climbs on top of him, straddling the moose's legs, and grabbing Sam's jaw, lifting the taller hunter's face to lean their foreheads together.

"You might be a jackass," Dean whispers, his thumb drawing lines from Sam's cheek to his ear. "A passionately arrogant." Head shake, smile. "Way-too...feely...and kind of too smart to realise it. Jackass..." He kisses the tip of Sam's nose and Sam winces. "But you're my jackass, and you don't get to give me permission to sacrifice myself for you. That's my decision. And yeah, I used to tell you when you could do that for other people. But you're younger, so that's my job." Another nose kiss. "You jackass."

Sam purses his lips and squirms slightly beneath Dean. Not uncomfortable - in fact, maybe too comfortable. Just...trying to think of an argument he hasn't yet used.

He gives in instead.

"Fine."

"Good."

And Sam smiles...

Maybe words are too much for them anyway.


	7. Squirmy Dean ugh

~~ _Dean knows the way he loves his brother is wrong, illegal. And he doesn't want to drag Sam into a mess like that. And he doesn't want people to know. Especially not John._

_And, while he can help never acting on his feelings, he can't help the thoughts that always pop into his head whenever his brother is even around. Even more so when his brother is hurting in one way or another, whether it be emotionally or physically. Stress, dysphoria, animosity, hell, a scraped knee. That's when they're strongest._

_"Please pull out your books and turn to page 218," the teacher shuffles through papers to find plans for the day and steps around his desk. "The Declaration of Independence."_

_Groans of slight disgruntlement before everyone and everything comes alive at once, floating around Dean; the flit of papers, the trample of textbooks hitting desks, the sharing of smiles, the flippant exchange of whispers, the surprise of a quietly arrogant laugh, and the harsh bite, the sourness of a life gone awry. And Dean just sits there, in the middle of an oblivious mess of humans and textbooks and teenage angst, and watches his hands - rough, calloused, from years of dutiful neglect and a slightly-too-affectionate embrace or two._

_His brother is only 13...he doesn't need to be exposed to something as disgusting as Dean is...or at least as disgusting as he feels._  ~~

Little had Dean known that that same night would be the night when he broke and admitted his feelings. Feelings that were returned, almost surprisingly. 

Are still, actually quite surprisingly, returned.

And Dean knows his brother doesn't need another confession at this point to know that Dean still loves him in a way he shouldn't. That point was made perfectly clear when Dean cracked, shattered, and swept himself up into a kiss that shouldn't have happened.

But it was the only way...right? It was the only thing that would get Sam to realise he can't get hurt again, he can't die again... And Dean simply does not have room in his heart for that again. 

He keeps trying to validate what happened. Keeps telling himself it may not have been the right thing to do, but it was the only thing he could think of. Because, really, who would think straight under the pressure, the weight, of the thought of the only constant in their life putting themself out there in the line of fire, knowing perfectly well they would die.

So, damn right, it was the only thing he could do. He had felt...no, had been... guilty. It had been his fault that Sam would so willingly die, because he's the one who made Sam believe that the damn moose no longer had Dean's love. 

But, truth is, Dean doesn't even own his own love anymore. It's trapped in Sam's hands, his damn hazel eyes and that fucking long, brown hair, and in his soul, however damaged said soul may be after the incident with Lucifer and the end of the world.

And maybe Dean wasn't thinking when he did what he did, but, whatever the case, it won't matter, because Sam will want to talk about it again. Will probably yell at Dean for doing something so selfish after acting so hostile for so long.

Won't he?

Sam - that little shit - walks into the room, half naked, wearing only jeans and a pair of socks, holding a Manila folder in his hands, and acting like he's not shirtless in front of the person who wants to fuck him up and down a wall.

Dean just raises his eyebrows, and, when Sam doesn't look up, only sets his coffee down and buries his face further into the files as he takes a seat, leaning back with his legs crossed, Dean clears his throat.

Sam finally looks up, his own eyebrows raised in what seems to be surprise.

Dean simply watches him with dark eyes and a predatory glare, waiting for him to catch on.

"Is there something you'd like to say, Dean?"

"I don't need to be prodded like a child," Dean's voice jumps above Sam's, interrupting the taller man's.

"Uh...okay?" Sam sets down the files and shifts forward in his chair. "Did you wake up with that stick in your ass, or did I do something to shove it up there?"

Dean squints and flaps his hand at the other hunter. "Put on a shirt."

"This is...actually bothering you? Is it that bad?" His eyebrows shoot up and he begins to examine himself. Little twat. "Am I getting fat or something?"

"Sam, you know what I said yesterday."

"Yeah, priorities...that's why I'm asking if this is really that huge of a problem."

Dean licks his lips, and averts his gaze. He's trying so hard and the fucker has to waltz in here like that, as if nothing is wrong.

"Exactly. My point is...you're not helping."

Sam just squints and, shaking his head, looks away for a second. Dean takes the opportunity to let his eyes wander over Sam's body.

Shit. Don't do it.

He does it anyway.

His eyes tumble dauntlessly downward to Sam's cock and - what the fuck? - find an erection.

"Look," Sam's voice jumps back into Dean's face and Dean raises his eyes just as Sam turns back around to look at him. "I'll go put something on if it's really that bad for you. I didn't mean to...do... _whatever_...just happened. I was ju--"

"Forget it. I don't care, I was gonna..." Dean trails off and shoves himself away from the library table. The rest of his words are muttered, and he's not sure Sam hears. "Go take a shower, anyway."

He steps out of the room and mopes down the hallway, in case Sam has decided to follow him out and watch him. 

But when he gets to the bathroom, he undresses quickly, turns on the shower, and steps into the most perfect water pressure he's ever experienced.

Sam didn't try talking to him about what happened - or maybe he didn't get the chance to. But, either way, Dean escaped, and now he knows one thing for sure...

Sam's given up on trying to change Dean's mind about things like this. ❌❌

And maybe he won't need to apologise.

Maybe he never needed to in the first place.

He grumbles when his thoughts circle back to Sam, shirtless, carelessly sitting back in that damb chair, his hair waterfalling over his face and his hazel eyes sifting through words like they're sand in his hand, not even caring that he's hard as a rock in front of his own brother. And he winces when he takes his own half-hard appendage in his hand and starts pumping to the thought of Sam, half naked, feeling wrong and sick.

But when he comes with Sam's name dripping from his water soaked lips, he decides he doesn't care less.

He can't.

Not when Sam is so ostensibly, incorribibly beautiful.

 


	8. More Protective!Dean.

~~  _"God-FUCKING-damnit Sam, tell me! Who did this?!" Dean's hands grasp at Sam's shoulders and an indignant shake is administered to the younger boy's body._

_"I can't--"_

_"Why not?!"_

_"Because if I do, they'll come for me again; it'll only get worse," the voice comes from the scratch of a bleeding jaw and an eyelid moving down to enclose a hazel eye. "What do you want me to do? Tell you so that you have to do this every day until I'm out of high school? I don't think that's gonna work out, Dean."_

_A sigh exchanged between throat and lips and a concerned Dean._

_"I'll get it outta you. One way or another. And I won't stop until I do. And when I do..." Rough hands grapple 13 and a half year old cheeks and a thumb slides absently over Sam's aching cheekbone. Slides over his face and sparks another realisation, one which he's undoubtedly had before. "I'm gonna rip their lungs out."_  ~~

Maybe Dean is a little too protective. Maybe he loves a little too much and a little to passionately.

Maybe the way he loves isn't traditional or mainstream or generic or any of the things everyone else would like.

That's why Sam likes the way Dean loves.

And he doesn't mean just him. He means anyone.

Dean's always been a quick sex kind of guy because he understands that he loves too much, too strongly, too differently, for anyone's good. So he tries not to get attached - by getting drunk and picking nameless girls up at skeazy bars and regretting it the next morning.

And he is probably the definition of denial.

That doesn't seem to be able to stop him from loving Sam. Probably because Sam is the one constant in Dean's life and, unless he's dead, that won't ever change.

So when Sam comes home to the bunker from a demon hunt he didn't bother to tell Dean about with two gashes intruding his upper left arm and countless other, though much less serious, injuries, you can guess how absolutely fucking furious Dean was, not only with Sam, for lying, but with the demons.

"Damn fuckin' scum...pieces of shit," Dean grumbles and dabs once more at the dried blood on Sam's cheek. Sam flinches at the words, though he knows they're not for him. He just hates when his brother is angry in general. Dean growls and grabs Sam's other cheek with his left hand to hold Sam still and Sam absently leans into the touch. "Stop moving."

"Sorry," Sam mutters and blanches at the way Dean scowls.

"Don't you fucking apologise, you little bitch," his eyes search the wound, probably for anymore blood or something that might indicate it could become infected, but are sure to only find the scars from the ten million other times Sam has cut his cheek in that exact spot, Sam knows. Because Dean's been dabbing at it for ten minutes now. Sam's actually completely sure his pores are waterlogged. "Don't you dare go apologising like that. You know why, Sammy? Because I don't want an apology. Apologies are excuses. No, I want..." He stabs Sam's shoulder with his finger and glares at the tall man. "I want an explanation."

"I was just do--"

"I don't want to know what you were doing Sam, I already know damn well what you were doing. And one man hunts... _involving_   _demons_...are not safe. What I wanna fuckin' know is _why_. Why go off without me? Why...even consider deciding to do what you decided to do when you knew it was wrong - when you knew you'd get hurt?" The accusation in Dean's eyes stings, but it's not the guilt Sam feels that punches him square in the jaw.

It's the absolute, undeniable, inarguable knowledge that Dean is actually hurt by Sam's poor decision.

"And I want to know who did this to you. What are their names?"

"Not a chance."

"Sam," the word is singular but sharp, warning, final.

"And what happens when I do tell you, Dean? What then, huh? You...what, go...find them? Take them down with your fucking superpowers? Isn't that how it always happens, Dean?"

"Tell me."

"You know, this is why I go off by myself on hunts. Because you do it. Because _you_  get names, and _you_  get angry, and _you_  go off and find them yourself and then expect me to not do the same. And you've been doing it your whole life," Sam pauses and shakes his head indiscernibly, a desperate longing for Dean to understand clinging to his lips, making room for itself by shoving the next words off said lips. "So this isn't some conscious decision, Dean. This is a habit. And it sure as hell...is not for shits and giggles, to make you angry, or whatever bullshit you've decided is the truest answer even though you know deep down it's not."

Green eyes fall downward with long eyelashes and roll over the floor before the mouth that belongs to them speaks again, gently, just barely tugging at Sam's fevered ears.

"Why won't you just listen to me...why won't you just stay here...where you're safe...and mine," and his voice is jagged, cracking and crumbling, and the tears start welling up, and pleading eyes hold Sam's gaze, ask a silent question. One that twists Sam stomach into knots and shatters his heart into a billion pieces.

His lips part and wobble, trying to find the right words. Trying not to think about the very real fact that his brother has very obviously given up, surrendered.

"I..." He can't. He simply can't. He hops off the kitchen counter and glides over to Dean. In a fit of unequivocal bravery, Sam lifts Dean's chin with his index finger and let's their lips touch - no hesitation or reluctance or wariness or any of the above.

Just an irrevocable, inexplicable, incorrigible, unparalleled, complete and absolute love that begs to be acknowledged. 

And it will be. It will shine in a spotlight that's not meant for it out of sheer force of will. It refuses to be ignored, especially by the two arrogant dicks that possess it.

"I'm gonna rip their lungs out, Sammy," Dean whispers into Sam's collarbone, squeezing his arms tighter around Sam's waist, his fingers digging into Sam's t-shirt, and Sam laughs.

"They don't actually need lungs Dean... demons don't breathe," he kisses the top of Dean's head and shakes his own. "Might wanna find a more important organ."

"Fine. I'll rip their entire frickin' heads off."

Sam snorts and his breath falters at the older man's peculiar ability to make him laugh.

"I guess that works, too."

A calmness and easy breaths.

And hazel eyes being captivated by the spikiness of some blonde hair.


	9. Concerned!Dean and Sick!Sam

~~ _"You are definitely not going on this hunt, buddy," Dean chuckles in sarcasm. Sam just huffs - or makes as much of a huffing type of sound as he can with his nose being stuffed up the way it is. "You going to school? That was one thing...that was annoying and only a little dangerous. But this?" Dean turns back around to face Sam and hands him the green tea. Sam furrows his brows and seems to regard the drink with an implicit dissatisfaction. "Not happening."_

_"What the hell is this?" Sam's choked voice surprises even Dean._

_"Tea." Dean takes a seat beside Sam and absent-mindedly places his arm over the back of the couch, behind his brother, letting his fingers play against Sam's shoulder, and he almost castigates himself. He lets his eyebrows bounce. "With a twist."_

_Sam allows a skeptical look to cross his eyes before he takes a sip._

_He splutters and holds the mug away from his body and Dean let's his laugh taunt Sam._

_"What the fuck is the twist?!"_

_Dean just laughs, and, when Sam shoots him a dirty look, tries to stifle what he knows is a shit eating grin to speak again._

_"Dude, you're such a lightweight."_

_"I'm fourteen and I've never tasted alcohol in my life. What the fuck, Dean."_

_"If it makes you feel any better, the look on your face is priceless."_

_"Go screw yourself, you ass."_

_The laughter of a man in love fills the room and Sam's smile, in spite of the fact that he very obviously does not want to smile right now, spreads across his lips and warms Dean's heart._

_Sam shoves Dean in the side with as much strength as a sick boy can muster and Dean simply pulls him closer, holding the boy's weight and, though it's a dangerous decision, letting the boy hold his heart._  ~~

Dean slams the drawer shut and drops a spoon into the soupy bowl, smiling down at his masterpiece.

He sets it on a tray with a glass of water and walks through the kitchen and back into the library. 

"Hey Sammy," he whispers, the sight of Sam still shivering even wrapped in a thick blanket, his hair mussed and his face red, heartbreaking. A fever and a sniffle and a cough.

Earlier that day, and for the past two days, it's been like this. And Dean has been in the bathroom with Sam about every six hours, holding back Sam's long ass hair as Sam empties the contents of his stomach into the toilet, and straining to not let his heart shatter any further.

And through all of it, Sam is still researching, the little fuckin' shit.

"You're still researching," more of a statement than a question.

"Yeah," Sam's voice is stuffy and cold. 

Dean nods and walks over, his eyes skipping over the floor.

He sets the tray in front of Sam, who regards the offering with indignation and shoves it away.

"Sammy, come on--"

"Dean."

A sigh and a hand dragging down a blonde hunter's face. Strong, capable arms wrapping around broad shoulders. A concerned face being buried in the back of Sam's neck.

"Please...please just..." Lips humming against Sam's skin.

Dean can't tell what face Sam is making from his position behind the moose, but he doesn't care. He just wants Sam to shut the fuckin laptop and go take a nap...

Maybe if Dean offered to let Sam sleep in Dean's bed...maybe if he held Sam like this forever, let Sam snuggle up to him in the bed, just like he used to do for the little snot.

He shakes his head.

Priorities.

"'Just'...what Dean? Quit trying to figure this out so I can sleep? I've gone a week without sleep before, remember? After Lucifer? After the wall in my head broke?"

"I know, Sam. I know."

Dean simply squeezes Sam tighter and plants a kiss - yet another terrible decision - on the back of Sam's clammy neck and starts to walk away without a backward glance.

"Wait. Dean," Dean pauses, glimpsing over his shoulder in time to see Sam twist in his chair, his eyes shadowed. Dean turns all the way around and watches Sam, expectant eyebrows raised.

Sam doesn't say anything more, he just struggles to stand, arms quivering, knees trembling...any strength he has left wavering; Dean's heart, already shattered and resting beside his torn soul on the floor, is crushed once more by the hammer of his brother's battle with...well, life.

Dean rushes over and helps Sam up, though he doesn't want Sam to be standing, much less walking like he's trying to do now.

"Sammy--"

"Dean just...help me to my bed."

Dean stops him, watches him with pleading eyes, holding all his weight, holding all the weight forced onto the younger man's shoulders, holding the boy's soul. 

He shakes his head, running a hand back over Sam's cheek and fighting back tears.

Dean's hand travels further back and cups around the back of Sam's neck, pulling him in, pushing their foreheads together. He closes his eyes and steps closer to Sam, letting his arms fold around Sam's neck. And, despite his shakiness, and his reluctance, Sam slips his own arms around Dean's waist, allowing them to stand with their foreheads touching and their arms encircling each other's bodies.

"God, Sammy...I wish I could fix you," Dean breathes, a small cry stuck in the back of his throat.

"It's not your job to fix me, Dean--"

"No, but it's my job to try," Dean replies, ultimately in vain, but ardently, nonetheless, his voice made of rough gravel and unfaltering resolve.

Hesitation - dull and unsure - and the flicker of reluctant hazel eyes, holding everything but solidity, searching Dean's face. And then brown hair bobbing up and down as Sam nods.

Dean latches his arm around Sam's waist compliantly and drags him on heavy feet to Sam's room. 

He sets Sam gingerly on the bed, conscientious as not to disturb Sam's muscles too much - he knows they're aching.

Sam struggles to adjust himself beneath the blankets and Dean places a gentle hand on his shoulder. He removes the blankets from Sam's body so he can get into a comfortable enough position - as comfortable as can be when as sick as Sam is - and tucks them back up to Sam's chin when Sam nods.

Dean knows he should leave. 

He should.

But he doesn't.

He watches Sam with green eyes, frightened and confused and diffident, and with leaden limbs, unable to move a foot one way or the other; to the bed or to the door.

Sam seems to wait vigilantly, calculating and patient.

Then he turns and catches Dean's gaze, holds it carefully, like it's a newborn kitten. 

"You're a terrible liar."

Dean squints and sputters, almost rearing back at the surprise and the confusing implications of his brother's words.

"W-what?"

"You said priorities."

"I also said you're a priority," Dean retorts, still completely lost, and he sits on the edge of the bed. "Specifically and especially right now."

"I know you said that. But that was after the fact. The first time you said it, you meant...well..."

"Sam, what the hell are you getting at?"

Sam just stares, the smile forming over his lips suggesting he knows something he isn't telling Dean.

Or maybe it's just Dean's imagination.

It doesn't matter because Sam is grabbing Dean by the shirt collar and pulling him down with surprising strength. He doesn't retaliate, simply allows Sam to pull him into the bed next to the taller man. 

"Seriously."

"What, Dean?"

"Tell me what you mean."

"I just...you meant exactly this, didn't you? You meant you would never do this kind of thing again..."

"What kind of...'thing'..." Dean squints, though he thinks he knows where Sam is going.

Sam just makes a flourishing motion, gesturing at...well, them.

"What, you mean...hugging you, touching you?"

There's a look in Sam's eyes like he's about to cry, his eyes turning red and darting down and away from Dean's face, his lips parting.

"And loving me, and being in the same room with me, and doing anything to comfort me--"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa....Sam....I could never--" Dean tries and Sam cuts him off with the most heartbreaking words - words that should sound accusing but just sound...pleading...terrified, lost.

"You could never stop loving me?" He stares at Dean, his lips trembling. "That's what you were gonna say, right, Dean? Because that's exactly what you said last time."

"I'm so sorry, Sam...I had no idea-I-I never...meant to hurt you like that. I didn't..." Dean struggles for the words but Sam just smiles, a wan smile that's filled with anguish, small but forgiving.

"It's fine, Dean," Sam sniffles, his hand playing over Dean's chest.

"Sammy, I--"

"Dean, shut up."

Dean stares, wide eyed, at Sam, whose grin dominates his face, acquitting and doting and beautiful. And Dean purses his lips and scoots in closer to Sam.

"Okay...well, Sammy, would like some special tea?" 

Sam shoves him in the side and Dean laughs. 

Just like when they were teens.

"Screw yourself, you ass," Sam mumbles placidly and burrows his head in Dean's shoulder, clutching at Dean's arm, which rests beneath Sam's head.

Dean's smile is saturated with an easy love and a inexplicable, serene ecstasy.

He nods.

Like when they were teens.


	10. Paying It Forward

~~ _"Would you quit fuckin' whining, you baby," Dean dabs at the cut with antiseptic again and Sam chomps down on Dean's t-shirt. His head is still buried where Dean has always let him rest it anytime Sam's needed stitch-ups for as long as he can remember. He doesn't know exactly how he first discovered it's comfortable to have his head in the base of Dean's neck while he's get jabbed with a needle, and he sure as hell doesn't know why. But it just is. "God, someone would think you're getting tortured with electrified nipple clamps and a whip."_

_"Dean, I think you're confusing porn with reality again."_

_"Am I?" He blanches slightly and shrugs, and Sam's head lifts with the motion. "I guess I never really know anymore."_

_"You're a dumba-- ow! Dean! Be more careful with that thing!"_

_"No swearing. You're thirteen."_

_"Exactly. I'm thirteen, not three. I'll do what I want."_

_"Sammy, you really think that's such a great idea considering doing what you want got you into this exact situation?" Sam can hear the smug look on his face and he jabs Dean in the side with his finger. "Also not a great decision. What if I were ticklish Sam? I'm holding a needle and pulling string through your skin."_

_"Getting my skin ripped off would be worth it if I got see you flustered," Sam's words are muffled and his mouth is so close to Dean's skin that he could simply turn and kiss it. But he doesn't._

_"That a turn on for ya, Sammy?" Dean chuckles and Sam can feel his face heat up, but he doesn't deny it. Just stabs Dean's ribs again and bites down on his t-shirt, preparing for the inevitable sting of the needle in his arm again and enjoying the trace of his brother's finger across his back._ ~~

Sam suppresses another cough, leftover from his bout of strange sickness, and strings the needle and thread trough Dean's skin with deft and nimble fingers and a sort of fervent carefulness that he's yet to understand.

He's usually not even this cautious when stitching himself up, so he doesn't know, after all his brother has said and done to him, why he would take any providence in closing the gash on Dean's ribs. 

Maybe because he, in some subconscious area of his mind, knows that any wound in the area of or directly on the ribs is far more sensitive than anything else. 

Even tearing a guy's balls open would probably hurt less than taking a werewolf nail to the side of the ribs.

Or maybe it's an undying love that simply won't disappear, no matter the amount of will power he puts into forcing it out of his mind and his heart.

Dean groans, a sound that, albeit muffled by the towel his teeth is clamped onto, is hard for Sam to hear...that breaks Sam's heart and makes him grimace.

"I'm sorry, Dean, but I can't let you walk around with a giant, two centimetre wide gash on one of the most sensitive, most easily infected areas of your body. Just..." He lifts his hand to rest it on Dean's back and trace shapes, just like Dean used to do for him, when they were teenagers... maybe even younger, but thinks better of it...almost...thinks better of it. He lets his hand hover, the wound forgotten, and mulls over the pros and cons of doing what he's thinking about doing. He sighs and just does it anyway. What's the harm? "Just try to relax. You clenching up like this isn't exactly helping your own case."

The moment Sam's hand reaches Dean's skin, Dean's breaths go from shallow and harsh, to deep...calm, and relaxed, and careful. And Sam bites his lip.

"Four more, okay? Just for more..." He frowns and leans down, hugging his brother with his arm around Dean's shoulders and his face buried in Dean's neck. "I promise," he murmurs and gets back to work. 

Dean's skin is clammy and pocked with goosebumps, but he doesn't shiver. He complies warily to Sam's requests and promises and stay completely still.

But Sam must hit an extra sensitive nerve, because suddenly, Dean gasps and cries out through the fabric in his mouth. He tightens, his muscles straining, and his arms quiver.

"Dean?!"

The older hunter pushes the towel away enough to speak and growls, "Dude, be more careful."

"I'm sorry Dean, I am. But I'm not a doctor, okay? I don't...I don't know where more sensitive spots are and I don't know how to avoid them without knowing where they are so just..." Sam trails off, trying to find the words to communicate his frustration, but decides, instead, on doing it the best we he knows how. He growls and throws his hands up before stomping away and leaning against the wall, facing it instead of Dean.

"Sam..." "Dean, I do _not_ have the patience to deal with your whining right now. You sound like you're being tortured. It's not that bad."

"You know, I seem to recall a point in time when you were a whiny, snot-nosed little brat about this kind of thing, too. Except all the time," Dean retorts and twists on the bed to consider Sam discreetly with his green eyes. "I think I damn well deserve to whine, too. Hell, I've downright earned it."

Dean's words are rough, sharp-edged, and they would sound menacing to anyone else, but they aren't meant to sting. They're just teasing, like almost every other snarky comment that escapes his beautiful lips.

Sam turns and can't help the wan smile that creeps onto his lips when he sees his brother's sweet smirk.

"Shut up," is all he says - quietly, a soft whisper caught gingerly by the baggy air - before walking back over to the bed and taking up the needle again.

Dean turns back over and, his eyes still smug, sneers, "So you don't deny that you were a little cry-baby?"

"No, I'm not responding to the comment because you need better insults, you little shit."

"Says you."

Sam's docile grin drags over Dean's back with his finger and he remembers all the times Dean so easily comforted him.

"Dean, you've stitched me up more times than I count. And I've never thanked you... not once. For any of those times."

"Sammy...why would you have to thank me?"

"Because you helped me without a second thought, and I don't just mean closing a cut or a bullet hole. I mean...you coddled me when I cried and then cheered me on when I was tough. You were there for me all those times...and I never even realised it...never had the right mind to be grateful for it. For you...for having you in my life, you know?"

"Ah, no, Sam. No..." He pauses and shakes his head vigorously. "No chick flick moments. Remember? I said that."

"Yeah, Dean. You've said a lot of things and I've said a lot of things, too, but what does it matter what we've said? What does it matter if we ever say things at all because we always go back on our promises...it's just who we are...so just..." He inhales, his mind twirling and his stomach doing backflips. "Just let me do this for you, and let me tease you and laugh at you like you used to do to me because I want that life again. And it's completely irrational to ever hope for it to come back but we can at least pretend, right?"

Sam hears Dean's smile rather than sees it; feels it in the way Dean shifts and in Dean's solid voice when he replies, "Yeah. Okay, Sammy."


	11. Idk This Entire Thing Has Turned Out To Be About The Brothers Protecting Eachother

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: idk what the fuck happened to this chapter. I mean, the memory is Dean POV and the chapter itself is Sam POV and I...I just don't know anymore. Sorry.

~~ _Dean swings his fist out again and lands a final punch to the bastard's jaw. A terrible crackling sound bounces off the brick wall of the school and finds Dean's ears._

_He lifts the boy easily, Dean's hand tangled in the bleeding shit's shirt, and he squints._

_"You mess with my brother again, and I will not hesitate to fucking kill you," Dean's growl is just a whisper, not even loud enough to echo in the alley way behind the school._

_The boy nods frantically and Dean drops him into the dirt and dead leaves slumped against the concrete. Where he belongs._

_Dean walks away without a second glance and turns the corner. He struts back out to the Impala and spots Sam throwing his backpack in the backseat of the car and ducking his head - that fucking moose - to get into the passenger seat._

_Dean smirks and walks faster._

_He gets to Baby and hops in - literally - making the old girl bounce then grins over at Sam who simply asks a silent question by considering Dean with a sidelong glance and a twist of his mouth._

_Instead of answering, he starts the car and pulls out of the school parking lot, cranking the music to an obnoxious level._

_When they arrive at the house after several sharp turns and an agitated Sam, they slam the doors shut and Dean tries to race Sam to the front door, a tradition that began years ago, when Sam first started kindergarten. Now, Sam just rolls his eyes and scoffs._

_Dean's stomach drops a little but he swallows his pride and tries not to let it bother him - the fact that Sammy is growing up so quickly...too quickly._

_When they enter the house, Dean quirks an eyebrow and tilts his head to listen. Dad's not home._

_"So...I figured out who that asshat was that beat you up."_

_"Dean...you didn't..."_

_"Oh, but I did, Sammy."_

_"Dean! Why the hell would you do th--"_

_"Because he hurt you, Sammy. What the fuck was I supposed to do?"_

_"Well, you shouldn't have done...whatever it is that I think you did, that's for damn sure!"_

_"Why are complaining about this? You should be happy."_

_"Why would I be happy about it?!" Sam glares at Dean, lips parted and eyes wide. And when Dean doesn't answer, Sam shoves the backpack off his shoulders and throws it against the couch._

_"Why would you not be?" Dean finally replies._

_"Because this'll only make it worse--"_

_Dean's had enough._

_He cuts Sam off by shoving him against the wall, and, though he may be getting talk as fuck, he's still not as strong as Dean, still lanky and awkwardly muscled, so Dean easily pins him there._

_"What the hell, Dean?!" Sam squirms for a moment before realizing his struggle is useless. He desists to Dean's arm in favour of shooting daggers through Dean's forehead with his eyes._

_It takes a second for Dean to speak, his eyebrows pulling in, his lips parted and tugging down, his eyes beginning to water._

_"Why can't you just let me protect you," his words are softer than they should be, more gentle than the situation calls for and Dean can't tell who's more surprised._

_"What?" Sam's answer is just a small slice through the calm air, disrupting the silence only slightly, peeking out at a dead audience through heavy curtains that they can only very slightly push aside, and his eyebrows can't seem to decide between surprise and confusion._

_They finally pick a middle path: something that would look like pity to anyone else, but that Dean knows is guilt._

_Dean shakes his head._

_No no no no no no no, Sam's not the one who's supposed to feel guilty. He's too young, too..._

_Not too weak...he's just been strong for a little too long._

_Dean's lip trembles and he shoots forward, his lips crushing Sam's in a pathetic attempt to make everything better. To make himself strong again, to fix Sam, to let Sam know he's there for him, to convince Sam that Dean loves him, goddamnit, he fucking loves him and nothing in the entire world could change that._

_And, damnit, Dean knows a kiss can't do these things, but fuck it all if he's not gonna try._

_When he finally pulls away, Sam stares at Dean with dazed eyes, his face not quite frozen in shock so much as a subtly insinuated sense of satisfaction._

_Sick fuck._

_Dean almost grins._

_This is dangerous, he knows, but...he can't keep denying what's happening between them. He refuses to. And he refuses to let his brother believe that Dean would ever leave him, that Dean would ever let him down...that he would ever do something to hurt Sam._

_Ever._ ~~

"We need food," Dean's throat scratches and he clears it, trying again. "We need food."

"Great observation. Anything else you'd like to tell me about human biology?" Sam sneers and peeks at the title of a book. He wishes Dean would be more specific about these things...and that he would stop putting books back in non-alphabetical order.

"And beer. We need beer."

"Not really."

"Trust me," Dean's reply is warning and Sam glances up at him, trying to wipe the smirk off his lips. "Oh, and--"

"Let me guess--"

"Pie!" Dean shouts, chucking that damn car's keys across the room. They fly past Sam's shoulder and land behind him on the table, skittering frantically to stop against a folded newspaper. He sighs and peeps over his shoulder to stare boredly at them and the crinkled print of the soft paper.

"And you want me to go out and get it?" Sam guesses, his eyes trailing back over to Dean, who's grin is ecstatic. And utterly annoying. Sam could smack him upside the head.

Or across the ass.

Sam smirks idly, shifting another book. It's by a Jewish author, and the corners are slightly burnt. Probably recovered from one of the book burnings. The cover is an olive green that matches Dean's eyes almost exactly, and Sam frowns. Because the book is charred. Broken.

Like Dean.

His hand slips from the textured binding and he glides over to Dean, snatching the keys up on his way over.

Sam needs to protect Dean.

Sam's younger.

But he needs to. He has to keep Dean safe. It's not just an obligatory job, built up or earned by Dean from years of protecting Sam. It's an ardent resolve to keep Dean by his side, one that's older than he can remember.

He walks right up to Dean, sliding a hand over the older man's cheek and, when his body catches up to his hand, he wraps the other arm around Dean's waist and presses his own body against Dean's, walking him backward toward the wall.

When Dean's back hits the wall, he grimaces, the gash on his ribs still healing. Sam ignores that and tilts his head, their lips centimetres apart. So close.

So far.

Dean just shakes his head and breaks the silence by pushing forward and connecting his lips with Sam's.

Sam's hesitant at first, but soon he takes in a sharp breath and pushes Dean's head back against the wall with the rest of the older hunter's body.

And they kiss.

They kiss for a long time, minutes. Maybe an hour.

No one could say.

But, what they both know is Dean's hand is warm against Sam's neck, and Sam's fingers play over Dean's spine, and Dean's smile disrupts the kiss for a number of moments, and Sam's smile possibly for more, and Dean's lips taste purely like Dean, like Sam's Dean, against Sam's own lips, and Sam can't say why he pulled away, but he did.

Maybe to look at his brother's eyes, to check and make sure they're real, and that they're still his - they're olive green, like the book cover, and they hold too many secrets to count, they hold much more love than they should be able to, they hold so many years of careful understanding, and they hold so many memories, of himself, of Sam, of he and Sam together, of the way they grew up and of the way their mother died, and they hold the way they could have grown up, but didn't, simply because they were never meant to, and they hold such a resolute defiance, a twinkle of pureness, a glimmer of hope and leftover innocence, clinging desperately to his pupil, wanting nothing more than to keep shimmering in his eyes when they light up. When they warm and glow at Sam's arrival.

And Sam nearly cries when he sees the faintest of smiles in those eyes - a sign that Dean is still fighting, has been fighting this whole time...will always fight. Fight for his brother and his home and his family and his love. Fight for whatever he may have left, for the happiness he already fights so hard to keep by his side.

And Sam shakes his head and kisses Dean again, a gentle brush of the lips, one that carries anguish and joy and shame and pride and sin and beauty. One that doesn't care what anyone or anything says or does to get in the way. One that flips off anything that might even _think_ about trying to get in the way.

A forehead against a forehead is something that only lasts a while, in physical time.

But it lasts forever in Sam's mind.


	12. Comforting!Dean

~~ _"Shhhh, I'm here, Sammy," Dean whispers, brushing his fingers through Sam's hair. Sam whimpers and nuzzles his nose further into Dean's neck. The boy's breath dances over Dean's sticky skin and heats him up even more._

_Dean plants a kiss on the top of Sam's head and shakes his own._

_It's not fair. It's not fair that Sam gets these nightmares, that Sam has to deal with the nightmares and with the weight of their mother's death. It sure as hell isn't fair that Sam completely and irrevocably and inconsolably blames himself for it. For all of it._

_The gigantic baby waltzed in at two in the morning without even knocking and then snuggled up to Dean without a word. He'd gotten to the bed, woken Dean up by sniffling, crawled beneath the sheets, and pulled himself against Dean without any hesitation._

_Now they lay in Dean's bed, legs and arms tangled in a jumble of limbs, chests breathing into eachother, a face buried in a neck, and a pair of lips pressing into brown hair. And what predicament._

_Sam's eyelashes scrape over Dean's chin, which only tickles a little bit, but he couldn't care less._

_Because Sam is closing his eyes, and Dean can feel Sam's face contorting and he feels the rumble of a new sob about to rip through Sam as it coagulates deep in Sam's chest._

_He squeezes tighter just as the tears coming tumbling out again, and Sam's fingers tighten in Dean's shirt, fisting the fabric in his shaking hands._

_Dean let's a tear of his own streak down his face, noiseless and patient and defiant._

_Beautiful and righteous in its own right._

_Despicable and frightening, too._

_He closes his eyes and wills it all to disappear. Imagines a better life, one with just him and Sam, horsing around in the Impala, sleeping in shitty motels, traveling the country, stopping at roadside diners for crappy burgers and beer (or rabbit food, for Sam). Dean smiles a weak smile, at that thought. His mind continues to twirl and sidestep and pirouette into other thoughts, other images and dreams... spending hours during the night, reclined on the hood of the car, a beer in one hand, Sam's hand in the other, watching the night sky caress the white pinpoints of light that are the stars, and knowing that, when he looks over into Sam's eyes, he won't be missing the stars, or the galaxies, or the soft breeze through his hair. Because it'll all be right there, in Sam's extraordinary hazel irises, waiting for Dean to admire and love them._

_Sam's next intake of breath slingshots Dean back to the present and he holds his brother closer, if that's even possible, clutching at his back and his hair._

_"Shhh, it's okay. Sammy, I'm here," he carves circles in the boy's bare skin with his thumb and kisses his forehead. "I'm here and you'll be okay. We'll be okay." Dean's face burrowing into the mop of mud on Sam's head, his voice crackling. "I promise."_  ~~

"Dean?" Sam's voice whirls through the thin air and lands on Dean's eyes, making them flutter open.

"Sammy? That you?" He barely sees the nod through the shadow of the room. "Shit. Come here." He opens his arms and Sam sneaks across the floorboards and finds Dean's hand with his own, entangling their fingers and sliding between the sheets. "I knew it. I knew I shoulda stayed with you."

He sighs and shakes his head, resting his chin on top of Sam's head, though the moose is taller.

"Shut up," Sam mumbles into Dean's chest and tries for a sad smile.

"Damnit, I thought these nightmares were gone," he mutters, gripping Sam's waist. He slips his hand beneath the hem of Sam's shirt and traces senseless patterns over Sam's back, tilting his head down and pressing his lips to Sam's hair. "I wish I could make them stop, Sammy."

"It doesn't matter," he breathes in response, his fingers walking across Dean's bare chest. "You wouldn't be able to. Dean, nothing would. Not even a deal with a demon or an angel's touch could do anything. I don't think God, himself, would be able to help."

"Don't say things like that, Sam," Dean chides, his lips quivering. 

"Like I said, it doesn't matter," Sam shifts suddenly, craning his neck and peeking up at Dean with thick lashes and heavy eyes, a mischievous but serene smile tugging at the corners of his lips. "Besides, if I didn't have them, I wouldn't get to wake you up in the middle of the night and make you cuddle me, you big grouch."

"Shut up, cuddles are nice," Dean growls, a pout - _a fucking pout_  - tempting his mouth. He listens to Sam breathing for a second, then leans in and offers a tiny kiss. 

Sam grins and bites down on his lip to suppress it.

"Yeah, Dean. They are," he sniggers and Dean pokes his ribs. 

Sam tries to scoot away, suppressing a small chuckle, but Dean locks his arm around Sam's torso and tangles his fingers in Sam's hair.

And Sam doesn't struggle. He simply slides even closer and buries his head in Dean's neck.

After a few minutes of utter silence and more patterns on Sam's back, there's a small noise, like Sam clearing his throat.

"I love you, Dean," Sam slurs right before his breathing evens out and he falls into what seems to be a blissful enough sleep.

Dean's words catch in his throat, scraping at his windpipe, trying to escape and failing.

Finally he responds, "I love you, too, Sammy."

But Sam doesn't hear. 


	13. Wincest Smut, Anyone?

~~ _"Dean," just a breath, a blur of a word, a dirty streak in damp room as Sam's nails falls from Dean's back and instead dig into the comforter._

_Dean's lips graze over Sam's jaw and he hums against Sam's skin. He rolls his hips again and Sam shudders at the feeling of Dean's cock sliding over his own._

_The pace is slow, careful, and Dean's hand lies protectively over Sam's chest._

_A few more thrusts and Sam is coming, Dean's name on his lips, his cock twitching and white liquid falling onto his belly._

_Dean follows soon after and his moan is broken up and choked off, quiet and powerful, in Sam's ear._

_Dean collapses next to Sam and his lips land on Sam's bare shoulder as his fingers dance over Sam's chest._

_Sam smiles audaciously, a soft smirk that just barely plays with his lips._

_"We're fucked up, Sammy," Dean laughs, his voice reverberating through the skin on Sam's arm._

_Sam grins playfully and chokes out a breathless reply, "Who cares?"_

_"I don't," Dean murmurs, scooting up and brushing his lips over Sam's ear._

_"Exactly," Sam turns his head and watches Dean with sparkling eyes, drinking him in: his green irises, his swollen lips that are pulled up into a sated smirk, his pink cheeks and the blonde freckles sprinkled so intricately throughout them, as if they were deliberate, his spiked hair, golden as all fuck._

_And they watch eachother for a moment._

_And they love eachother forever._  ~~

Sam's eyes open slowly and he twists in the comforter to find Dean missing.

He sighs and falls back into his bed, his arm blocking his eyes. He takes a few minutes before shifting beneath the covers, sifting through the sheets and finding his way out from between the wonderland of fabric.

Sam scratches at the back of his neck as he stretches and yawns, then pulls his fingers through his hair. He works his jaw and decides working through a knot in his hair would be easier with a mirror. He waltzes over and bends down, being as tall as he is, and starts brushing through the dark mess. His eyes wander from the mirror, and bounce across the room. They land on the short shelf of books at the head of his bed and find that they are - infuriatingly - out of order.

Again. He saunters over, the knot in his hair all but a problem anymore, and rearranges the books.

Sam searches the floor and slips on a pair of grey sweatpants that hang loosely from his hips and grumbles at the stretched out waistline.

Dean did that on purpose, he's sure of it. He messed with Sam's books.

The fucking asshole.

Sam sets his jaw and stomps through the hallway and into the library.

"You little shit! You messed with my books!" Sam announces from across the room. Dean sits with a leg resting atop the table and the other leg atop that leg. He holds the newspaper in one hand and his coffee in the other, and only glances up at Sam with an indifferent regard.

"What's that now, Sammy?" He mumbles and turns his head to read the other side of the page he's on.

Sam makes an exasperated noise, a harsh sigh, and he drills further into the library, toward Dean and his damn fuckin' coffee and his damn fuckin' newspaper, and the shit eating smirk on his face.

Dean finally looks up, and when he does, he freezes, his eyes traveling across Sam's body. Their destination isn't an appropriate one.

"Sammy," Dean's voice is suddenly sharp, dangerous and he sets down the coffee, working his jaw.

"What!" Sam spits in return, an exasperated breath. Dean's attitude is really getting vexatious. 

"Why don't you stop yelling and go put on a shirt," a strange mix between a request and a demand that throws Sam way off guard.

"W...what?!" He's still yelling - or he's trying to - and he doesn't know why because now he's confused as fuck rather than indignantly annoyed.

The newspaper flutters from Dean's hand and he stands calmly, his eyes falling shut.

"I said. Go put on a shirt."

"Dean, are you okay," Sam's breathing is just beginning to even out. 

Dean simply tilts his head, struts over collectedly, and places a hand on Sam's chest. He seems to be admiring Sam's build, and Sam feels his cheeks turning red.

"Dean, what are you--"

Dean appears to put all his energy into shoving Sam back against the book shelf and pinning him to it.

"You...have made a very poor decision or two."

"What are you talking about, Dean?"

Dean shakes his head and grins, malicious, mischievous, dominant.

"You have no idea what I want to do to you right now."

And Sam raises his eyebrows at the implications' jarring collision with his thoughts.

'Oh,' is what Sam means to say next.

But he's feeling chivalrous.

"What happened to priorities Dean?" Sam squirms under Dean's placidly appraising glare, his eyes eating up Sam's torso like a vulture devouring a dead rodent.

Dean only chuckles softly, tauntingly.

"With this again? Well, Sammy, they foxtrotted out the window on the back of a fuckin' Pegasus when you decided to stomp in here wearing nothing but this," he pauses to tug at Sam's loose sweatpants and Sam's body freezes - his limbs, his heart, his eyes, everything. "And with nothing in your mouth but some pretty shitty choice words for me."

"Didn't know angry me was a turn on, Dean," Sam laughs but Dean digs his fingernails into his bare back and Sam swallows his sarcasm along with his pride.

"It might be smarter of you to shut up."

"Rough sex your forte, Dean?" Sam smirks, testing the man, then adds courageously, "Or is it just the fact that it's me?"

A deadly squint that reaches into Sam's eyes and shoots daggers through his soul, a predatory tilt of the head, a dangerous open mouthed grin and a pair green eyes that turn darker with every circuit they do over Sam's face and torso.

Dean creeps in slowly, letting his hands skim Sam's chest and his lips brush Sam's ear, and every fibre of Sam's being tingles at Dean's husky voice.

"It might just be you."

Dean's hand flies quickly over Sam's skin and finds his growing arousal, cupping it and rubbing his hand over the cotton covered appendage until Sam is thoroughly and utterly _melting_ against the bookcase and in Dean's arms.

"Dean."

"Mmm," just a burning hum, a silent prayer, against Sam's chest, as Dean's left arm snakes up and encapsulates Sam's waist. 

"We can't," Sam replies lamely but Dean apparently doesn't much like that answer and he clamps his teeth down on the skin above Sam's nipple. "Shit," Sam's breath falters.

He gulps in a huge wad of air, trying to think straight, trying not to let his train of thought be so easily and catastrophically derailed by Dean's mouth around his flesh and Dean's finger hooking beneath his sweatpants.

Dean pushes Sam's pants and boxers down and Sam squirms, writhes, bucks beneath Dean's touch.

"Fuck," he breathes and lets his head hang against Dean's empty shoulder.

"Mhm," is the only thing Dean even bothers to mumble in return.

He pulls back abruptly and lifts Sam's head to look him in the eyes and Sam searches Dean's green orbs for any sign that this is just teasing or that Dean may finally be going completely insane, but he finds none. As always. Dean seems to do the same, holding, caressing Sam's cheeks in his hand.

"Do you still want me like this, Sam?" Dean's voice sounds detached, disembodied and confused, and Sam can tell it's just as much of a surprise to Dean as it is to himself.

"Of course," Sam croaks, breathless and sated. "Of course, Dean. Forever."

And Dean kisses him, hands squeezing his cheeks, arms pressed against Sam's chest, their lips colliding like two stars, searching for eachother blindly and finally reuniting in the blackest depths of outerspace and crashing together to create a blinding quasar, one that will not be stopped.

And damnit if Sam doesn't let that man kiss every centimetre of exposed skin - doesn't enjoy it, either.

Dean tugs his fingers trough Sam's hair idly as his other hand finds its way back to Sam's aching cock. 

He pulls Sam back in and kisses him again, lapping at his quivering lips as he runs his hand slowly over Sam's remarkable endowment, remembering it, cherishing it. And Sam blushes all over again when he realises how long it's been and how tentative Dean is.

Sam simply sinks back into the bookshelf, letting it and Dean carry all of his weight, his back arching into Dean's lips as they graze their way across Sam's chest.

The hand in Sam's hair crawls down his back and sweeps around to his hip, and a thumb pushes into the dip inside his hipbone. He exhales sharply and pushes his hips into Dean's touch, impatient, wanting - to feel Dean again, to feel Dean's mouth finding his own and his skin, to feel Dean's fingers scraping over his jaw and his back, to feel Dean's body moving against his in a moment of heat and beauty and absolute, shameless, guiltless pleasure, to feel Dean's teeth skimming his neck and his collarbone and biting down on any skin he can find when he comes inside Sam.

And, God, Sam wants that.

He whines, the velvet of Dean's lips against his stomach utterly unbearable.

"Hold still," Dean mumbles, words gentle and restricting, his hand moving from Sam's twitching cock and sliding up to press lightly against his chest, and Sam realises he must have been writhing under Dean.

All Sam can do in response is grunt because, Jesus Christ, Dean's hands are soft and warm and perfect against his skin. And he groans because the lack of the heat of Dean's fingers wrapped around his cock is agonising.

He tries to 'hold still' as much as he can with his sharp, staggering breaths making his chest shake and with the torture of Dean's lips brushing the skin just around his pounding member. 

Dean pauses for the most fleeting of seconds and pears up at Sam through eyes as heavy as lead, soaked in lust and love and deep in the thought that maybe this is the wrong thing to do.

"Sam."

"Dean."

The silence drips in the air, melts against the heat of Sam's skin, hangs itself like lights on a Christmas tree, bearing heavily down on the the hairy boughs and snapping them with the innocent intent of wanting to simply be there, without question.

But Sam is brave enough to question everything.

"Why are you doing this?"

Dean only watches him with an implicit antipathy toward either the question itself or toward the situation. Maybe toward his own feelings about the situation.

Sam figures the latter is more likely.

"Because I love you," Dean whispers, his words broken and scarred and terrified, cowering behind the drawn curtains of his most hidden emotions. He stands suddenly, leaving the crouching position he was in and leaving Sam's hard cock to stand at attention without any orders. Dean steps in closer than Sam thought was possible and presses their foreheads together, his eyes scrunched in a sadness like Sam's never seen. "Not out of pity. Not out of fear or anger. Not out anything but the fact that I want you, Sam. I want you and I can't...I can't do anything about it, can't do anything...to stop it. To stop the thoughts and feelings that shoot through my head like a fucking bullet."

Sam's lips decide to get a divorce, parting in surprise at Dean's apparent resolve to make Sam realise how much he actually cares.

And it's a lot more than Sam thought before.

Sam breathes in, slow and steady, the scent of the dusty bunker and the scent of purely Dean invading his nostrils and making him shiver. He nods, leaving forward and kissing Dean again, giving him permission to do anything, to want everything and take everything.

And Dean's hand finds Sam's cock again and Sam strains, trying hard not to cry out at Dean's hand pumping its way to Sam's orgasm, creating a perfect rhythm and pressure, already knowing, from years of doing this exact thing, exactly what two brothers really shouldn't do, how to get Sam worked up.

Dean's voice is rich against Sam's neck, low and beautiful and powerful, when he murmurs, "Come for me, Sammy."

And Sam does. And the stream of white squirts out onto Dean's t-shirt, probably rendering the fabric permanently stained, and Sam can feel Dean's grin disrupting his face buried against Sam's shoulder.

And Sam's gasping cry of pleasure is harsh and it echoes through the bunker like a gunshot in a mausoleum, a crowd of cheers in a stadium, loud and uninhibited and unstoppable, professing all of its love without hesitation, bowing in grandeur and ceremony to the only two audience members it has, shameless.

And Sam smiles at it, sinking back against the books, letting Dean's arms and Dean's love engulf him in a picture of pure grace and beauty. 

"Fine," Sam teases repeating his single, defined word from days earlier.

"Good," Dean plays along, grinning, and captures Sam's lips in a lazy, exhausted kiss, one that falls and rises with Sam's breaths.

They pull away together and watch eachother the way they used to after something like this, each man's gaze holding the other's. Each smile serene and filled with an inexplicable capability to incapacitate the other man for seconds at a time, to make the other man's breaths waver and crumble.

Sam once thought that he was the ocean and Dean was the shore, and that Sam was too powerful, crashing down on Dean constantly, burdening him with a benevolent intent but, instead, simply eroding him, eating away at the soft white sand of his conscience.

But, no. That's not true, not anymore.

Because Dean is the ocean too, and the world is the beach. And Sam and Dean crash down on it together, forcing it to fall farther back, to fold into itself. And together they are powerful, meaningful, arrant and without a care about what they might be doing to hurt the sand, sneering at it from their place atop the highest of horses. And they are the heaviest, most forceful of hurricanes, twirling their way across the world in a flurry of reckless passion and careless regard for what they may destroy.

And Sam fucking loves it.


	14. "It Doesn't Seem Right To Say Goodbye."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Damn right, I did that as a title.
> 
> Because I am an obsessively sadistic bitch with a urgent need to shit on any happiness that may still reside inside your heart.

~~ _"Don't leave," Sam's voice is infinitesimally diminutive, scampering from his lips and into Dean's ear quickly and without so much as a squeak. "Please."_

_A seventeen year old hand grasps a twenty-one year old wrist and an even older leather sleeve, and an utterly insatiable anxiety tears through the body that belongs to the seventeen year old hand._

_Fingers brush and bristle skin and tears are exchanged._

_"Sammy. Baby, I'd never leave you," Dean's head - made of spiked blonde hair, shorter than he's ever had it, and two very troubled, nearly petrified olive green eyes - sweeps back and forth and his voice is whispered but it slices the air briefly, leaving a scar. "Never. You know that."_

_"You keep promising--"_

_"I know--"_

_"--and promising but I can't believe you, I can't. Dean, because...because I'm so fucking scared that you will."_

_"Sammy," Dean replies, his hand shifting from his side and making the intrepid journey from his hip to his brother's determined face. "Sammy, I wouldn't...I couldn't leave you. Please understand that."_

_His pleas don't go unheard and Sam nods, placing his own hand over his brother's on his cheek and allowing their foreheads to rest against eachother. His eyes flip closed and he sniffles again, his nose running and his tear stained cheeks heating._

_They kiss. For minutes, for hours, for days and weeks and years and fucking centuries and it's not enough for Dean. It never is. But they kiss, nevertheless, and Dean's back is bare, turning toward the open window, and the dark space cadet blue of the night streaks the room with dark chocolate fingers, shadows that flit and float and land softly on the boys' skin._

_The kiss is lovely, beautiful as a model for a magazine, righteous and terrible - terrible because the world says it is and because they both know it shouldn't be happening._

_But they can't seem to find the prudence to care._ ~~

"Dean, please," Sam begs again as he slumps further into the bed, having given up long ago and now simply speaking mechanically, habitually. And the younger man's dismal, seemingly irreconcilable stupor is tantalising for Dean. Petrifying.

And Sam is his only brother, the only person he really has left in his life, so hell, yes, it's utterly terrifying for him, the unstoppable possibility of another bout of depression for Sam dangling over both their heads, taunting them, because it affects both of them. It always has, it always will.

Dean shakes his head, not inclined to answer.

_Fucking priorities._

He brushes past Sam, but Sam's hand shoots out and grips his wrist, stopping Dean dead in his tracks.

Sam's eyes still search the ground but Dean waits, and, slowly, too slowly, Sam's eyes reach Dean's, looking just as absolutely fucking mortified as Dean feels.

"Don't go."

And Dean's heart shatters, falls to the floor, the pieces combing over the wood in a brazen attempt to scar Dean in the most insolent way possible.

He drops the machete he was holding next to Sam on the bed and crouches in front of Sam, whose eyes follow Dean's face in every movement he makes. 

Dean's words are graceless, not able to tolerate brevity or precaution, and they're tenuous, and so they're soft when he speaks.

"I have to. This demon ain't gonna kill itself. But I wish I could stay," he shifts abruptly, climbing up onto Sam's lap, his legs straddling Sam's thighs, and he slides his hands up over Sam's cheeks, pressing their foreheads together, eyes closing, unable to look into Sam's.

"And what happened to 'one man demon hunts are dangerous'?" Sam retorts softly, his lips millimetres from Dean's.

_Just a kiss. Maybe two. Priorities or not._

_I've missed you_ , Dean wants so desperately to say it out loud.

"Yeah," he laughs, short and choked and breathy, and it seems like it should sound to anyone else as if Dean is tenaciously apathetic toward the entire thing. But in all honesty, he's tendentious - about wanting to fix Sam, about wanting to be there for Sam, about wanting Sam in general. It's bittersweet, and vapid and fruitless. But it's happening and neither of them can stop it. And so the laugh isn't him being apathetic. It's him not knowing what to say about anything anymore. "Yeah, I guess I did say that, huh, Sammy."

"Yeah, ya did. And now--" Sam's voice falters and he pauses to breathe in. To collect himself. And Dean can only imagine how hard that is right now. Sam swallows the conglomeration of tears from his lidded eyes and speaks more softly, trying to stay calm. "And now, you're going back on your own words - again - and you're going to go after some demon who, in the end, really doesn't matter, Dean! She just doesn't...matter, please. Please don't go." His voice is cracking all over, attempting an even stride and failing miserably. When he speaks again, his voice is just a breath on Dean's skin, nearly inaudible. "Don't leave me again."

And Dean's lips drag open and his eyebrows scrunch and he pulls away and lifts Sam's face - lifts his face because he knows damn well that Sam won't lift it himself. He lifts Sam's face and searches his burnt umber eyes, ashen and listless in the dim lighting of the bedroom and in the dimness of the rough circle that his life has become. Because when someone gets this far into it, neck deep and determine faced and confused, it's hard to get back out, and so it's a circle, a jagged edge. And Dean can't find a way to stop it.

"Sam...this isn't just about this hunt, is it," Dean says, disconsolate and wise.

"I...I don't...have an answer to that."

"Because you know I'm right. Sam...I'm not leaving. Not permanently. Maybe a day or two--"

"No...no you can't leave because then you'll be gone and I won't know what to do with myself and...and what if you don't come back," his voice creaks at the end, shifting and whining like the old wood of the floorboards in their childhood home, and it crackles, wavers and wobbles like a wave sifting through its friends, finding its way to shore and not having a clue if it actually wants to be there, unsure, and falling back at the last minute. It clutches at Dean, a hand clenching around his heart and squeezing mercilessly. It makes the pit of his stomach knot irreversibly, and it makes his frown tremble.

"Baby, I'm not going anywhere--"

"Then stay," Sam interjects, tilting his head down and breathing out the smallest of sobs. "Please."

"Goddamnit, Sammy," Dean shakes his head, disappointment and disapproval both unbroken and clearly evident in his light, silvery, olive green eyes. "Why you gotta play with my weak spot, huh?"

"I _am_ your weak spot, Dean." "Yeah, you are, you little shit."

"Those demons? They know it, too. And they'll find a way to take you away from me. Because you're _my_ weak spot, too." The sentence of silence hangs in the air between them, slightly disturbed every now and again by the soft breeze of the air conditioner and by the lilt of the boys' breaths, and it dangles like an anvil, a devilish grin cracking its face in half as it waits for the right opportunity to shatter the Winchesters.

Dean is determined not to let that happen.

"I won't leave, Sammy--"

"Ever?"

"I won't go on this hunt. I'm not gonna leave, I'm not going anywhere, okay?" Dean pushes forward and lets their lips meet in the smallest, saddest, most assured kiss ever. "I promise."

Sam's smile is quick and smirk-esque, a tiny half smile that goes as quickly as it came, but a smile, and he pulls backward, bringing Dean with him, landing on his back on the bed with Dean still bracing his body. And it's such an amazing, beautiful position, because from here, Dean can see the flecks of orange and gold and maroon-ish red in in his hazel eyes, which have slowly been amending themselves to green, he's noticed. Green like Dean's, green like the grass and the trees, green like the happy smiles of a small child, still holding all the innocence and curiousity in the world right inside their eyes, green like the ocean during sunrise, that one time when Dean lifted a twelve-year-old Sam's sleeping body into the Impala at one in the morning and then drove for hours and got to the beach in Texas - to this day, he still doesn't know which one it was - and Sam woke up just as Dean was lifting him out of the car and they sat on the hood of the Impala, Sam wrapped tightly in a blanket and Dean's arms, and simply watched the sun peek out from behind its child's shoulder, puffing its cheeks and blowing the waves toward them, toward the car tires on the sand and toward their bare feet, and Sam had looked up into Dean's eyes and said 'Dean, I see the ocean in your eyes. I see it! It's right there! Your eyes, they're the same colour! They look like the ocean!' and he'd gotten so excited about it, so uninhibited about his unconditional love for Dean.

And Dean has cherished that moment, he realises, to this day, right up until this one, right now, and he'll probably cherish it forever, reveling in the tiny grin of his little brother, who, back then and sometimes, every once in a while, even now, still had that glimmer of hope in the corners of those big, wide, hazel-green eyes. The ones with a small accumulation of a soft, feathery blue right in the top right corner of the left iris. The ones that envelope him in a kind of sweet sadness, a beautiful love that Dean wishes he'd realised was still there, even after Sam had broken the wall in his giant brain. And then another thought hits him, slaps him across the face and knees him dead in the solar plexus and he suddenly can't breathe.

"Sammy..."

"Mm," Sam only hums in response, his eyes still closed, and plays with the lapels of Dean's leather jacket - he rarely wears it anymore, and Sam seems to enjoy the days when he does.

"Oh, God, I'm so sorry," Dean's voice cracks and he cranes his head, burying his forehead in the hollow of Sam's neck, and Dean can hear Sam's frown as he removes his hand from Dean's jacket and sifts through the leather and cotton between the two of them to free his arms and wrap them gently around Dean's waist.

"What do you have to be sorry about?" Sam's voice drifts past his lips and into Dean's ear in an impudent whisper - impudent because it's brash and protective, not serving justice to the situation they're currently in.

"Leaving you alone when you needed me the most. When the wall broke and you were left all alone in that big brain of yours and you had to figure it all out yourself. And I never left your side for a second, but goddamnit if I wasn't pissed as fuck. Pissed at you for scratching the wall, pissed that you went to the pit - God, why couldn't you have just killed me - and I was fuckin' pissed that you even thought about suggesting your plan to say yes to Lucifer, and I was pissed that you drank demon blood in the first place, Sam," Dean's mumbled words against Sam's skin turn into a whisper, an indefinite, bottomless pit, an oblivion of emotional distress and desperation. "And, God. Sammy. Your soul was so mangled and twisted and terrified and I _SHOULD HAVE BEEN THERE FOR YOU_!" He shouts into Sam's neck because he doesn't want to shout out in the open, where his voice is louder, more clearly disconsolate and broken.

"Dean," Sam's single word, just as torn and scarred and burnt as Dean feels, finally registers in Dean's mind.

He peeks up at Sam, trying for an apologetic look and not quite getting it; he's no energy to do it right now.

"Dean, I...don't apologise. Please. Just..." He swallows and lifts his head to kiss Dean again, sallow and thin and ripped up. Like them. Like their odd family. Sam smiles, a genuine smile that holds no pity or apology, just love and affection and wonder. "I love you, Dean. I know you don't want to say it back...you didn't last ti--"

"I love you, too, Sam. Jesus Christ, I love you," Dean blurts and Sam's face twists into a calm kind of surprise, gentle and kind. Then his gorgeous smile, the one Dean absolutely loves, spreads across his face, and it's pink and precious and saccharine. And Dean smiles, too.

And they lie there for hours, in a beautiful mess of beating hearts and serene smiles and bristling fingers and tangled limbs and baby kisses and with an entire little galaxy of their own right in their eyes - Dean's being the cleansing ocean and the swaying grass, and Sam's being the stars that hold Dean's.


	15. Eyes That Can Hold And Ocean And Eyes That Can Hold A Galaxy

~~ _Sam looks down and grins at his hands, his knee bouncing._

_"Well, what is it?" His father prompts, throwing a hand out and letting his brows rise expectantly._

_Sam looks up and surveys their small family as John and Dean sit across from him at the dining room's rectangular wooden table._

_"I was accepted to Stanford. Pre-law," he finally replies, still smiling like an idiot. They'll be proud of him. He knows it._

_"What," the sharpness of John's voice startles Sam out of his happy daze and his smile slowly sinks into a frown. "What?" He asks in return, his voice playing more along the lines of utter confusion._

_"What did you say?" John reiterates, rephrases, trying to glean the information out of Sam by acting innocent and gentle, but his voice is still harsh._

_"Stanford, I'm going to...to the university..." Sam's voice trails away, though, when he realises the anger in his father's eyes._

_"You're leaving," John's voice is quiet at first but he raises it when he adds, "I thought you were goin' into the family business, son. I thought..." He laughs grimly and stands, the chair making a terrible grating, screaming sound as it flies back against the linoleum tile of the kitchen floor. "I thought you were better than that, Sam. I really thought, despite all my worries, that you were gonna make the right choice. Obviously I was wrong."_

_"Dad, what--"_

_"I was wrong and how stupid am I," he leans over on the table, pressing his forearms into the sheet of wood, and squints at Sam with a dangerous regard in his eyes. "You either leave and be at that stupid college and do your thing there, or you stay and hunt with us and do your thing here. There is no in between." He stands up straight again, tall and powerful and watches Sam with a disinterested, condescending regard before adding, "This is your next big decision. Make it."_

_He walks out of the room, and, from the sound of the front door slamming shut, outside. To smoke, probably. Maybe take his new car - he gave the Impala to Dean - out to Bobby's to get drunk off his ass again._

_Sam gulps in a breath of air he didn't realise he needed, and takes a second to watch the floor before looking back up at Dean, shy and scared._

_Dean stares back at him, a frown holding up his nose like a tower on a hill, and he stands and glides around the table. When he gets to Sam, he hunches over behind the taller boy and folds his arms around Sam's already broad shoulders, burying his face in the side of the base of Sam's neck._

_"I'm so proud of you, baby," Dean murmurs into Sam's skin and Sam smiles wistfully, lifting his arms feebly and wrapping his fingers around Dean's bulky forearm, letting his own arms hang from his hands morosely. Dean presses a kiss to the back of Sam's ear and settles his face back into the side of his neck. "So proud of you. Don't listen to dad. He's just being an asshole, you know that." He sinks further into Sam and Sam lets him, hangs onto him, because Dean is the only family he seems to have left. "Just promise me one thing, Sammy."_

_Sam hums his consent, his head falling against Dean's._

_"Promise you'll wait for me. Promise me you won't go off and find someone else...someone better..."_

_"I wouldn't do that, Dean--"_

_"Promise."_

_Sam breathes in and tightens his grip on Dean's arms._

_"I promise, Dean."_

_Promises are kept in the Winchester family..._

_Right?_  ~~

 _I should never have left_ , Sam chides himself. _I shouldn't have left for that damn college because when I did, I broke my promise. To Dean. I met Brady and then Jess and I broke my promise. And now he's broken._

"Because of me," he whispers, burrowing his face further into Dean's shoulder.

Earlier, they'd come home from an Arachne hunt, showered together without touching save for resting their hands on eachother's hips and leaning foreheads against eachother and small kisses here and there, and then laid down on top of the comforter in Dean's bedroom, pulled eachother close, and curled into eachother.

It would be quite the sight for someone standing outside of either of the boys' subconsciouses.

"What's that, Sammy?" Dean's voice is laced intricately with a quiet concern but he tries so very hard not to let it show. And Sam just shakes his head slowly and nuzzles at Dean's shoulder, prodding him until he shifts and wraps his arm around Sam's shoulders.

Dean's lips meet Sam's forehead and stay there for a while, and Sam tries to mediate his guilt for that time, tries to simply enjoy the feeling of Dean's lips as a whisper against his hair.

For the first time in a very long time, the bunker is silent, calm. It's almost overwhelming, allowing the calm to take over so completely, to surround him and keep its tight grip.

And in that moment, Sam falls into the beauty of the almost post-apocalyptic type silence, _allowing_ it to envelope him, to envelope Dean who envelopes Sam, to envelope both of them together, as one, _allowing_ it to gather his conscious being into it's arms and to float away with both of them.

And in that moment, Sam doesn't know which way is left or right or up or down, he's simply standing, or maybe sitting, in an empty room, holding Dean, who holds him back and who loves him unconditionally, without inhibition, without doubt.

_His eyes are like the ocean at sunrise._

_We are both the ocean_.

And in that moment, Sam realises they are more than the ocean, than a hurricane whipping angrily around and disturbing the earth. 

They are two stars, twisting and dancing and shining and burning and ripping through the universe at light speed, laughing wildly and crackling with a malevolent beauty, sparks falling from their bodies and setting the blackest depths of outer space on fire, lighting their own way with the bright, white light that their own bodies exude so powerfully that they will never need a seperate light source.

And they shove everything out of the way as they move between the planets, tearing gashes in the dark curtain of space like a blade sliding over a cushion, letting the stuffing swell up and spill over. And they grin proudly at whoever cares to watch, and they jeer maliciously at whoever cares to try and fucking stop them.

And they are beautiful.

And they are love. Grace. Wonder.

And they are the stars. The ocean.

They are eachother's.

_His eyes are like the ocean._


End file.
